Letter to Friedrich Engels, January 21, 1859

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 21 January 1859


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 21 January [1859]

Dear Engels,

The ill-fated manuscript[2] is ready but can't be sent off as I haven't a FARTHING for postage or insurance. This last is essential since I have no copy of it. Hence I must ask you to let me have a little money by Monday (POST OFFICE IN TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD CORNER). If you could send £2 it would be most welcome as I have put off paying various small tradesmen until Monday, after which any further postponements will be absolutely out of the question. As you can imagine, it is far from pleasant for me to burden you again just now when you have paid, or have got to pay, Freiligrath's bill. BUT IRON NECESSITY. Next week—as I am giving myself a week's holiday quoad[3] the next part of the manuscript—I shall see if I can't manage to pull off some financial coup or other. I don't suppose anyone has ever written about 'money' when so short of the stuff. Most autores on this SUBJECT have been on terms of the utmost amity with THE SUBJECT OF THEIR RESEARCHES.

Should the thing prove a success in Berlin, there's a chance that I might get out of all this mess. It's HIGH TIME I did.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

If the thing proves a success in Berlin, it might be possible to strike a bargain with a London publisher in respect of an English translation, and there's no comparison between what one is paid over here and in Berlin. Besides, such an EVENT would dreadfully annoy our worthy enemies. The canaille believed that we were both of us done for—the more so just now when Mr Clown 'Edgar Bauer' has 'supplanted' us 'in the eyes of working-men', as Gottfried Kinkel is telling all and sundry in the City. With every word they publish, the canaille are making out their own death warrants and well may they wonder what SORT OF LIFE' we have preserved.

I'm u n c e r t a i n w h e t h e r I s h o u l d m a r k the t h i n g ' T H E AUTHOR

RESERVES TO HIMSELF THE RIGHT OF TRANSLATION'. (A s yOU k n O W, t h e r e ' s a copyright agreement between Prussia and England.) My aversion to all humbug and semblance of vanity or pretentiousness says 'No'. On the other hand my own interests say 'Yes'. The more so since some scrawl about monetary matters is published almost weekly in England. WHAT DO YOU THINK, SIR? This point requires an immediate answer since I myself must decide by Monday.

  1. ↑ This letter was first published in English in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979.—66, 97, 122, 143, 225, 315, 321, 328, 369, 378, 429
  2. ↑ K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
  3. ↑ as regards